Toshiba Excite tablets hands-on pictures and impressions

Toshiba has three new slates to try and tempt your cash with and all come bearing the name 'Excite'. I went in for a hands-on with the tablets at a showcase so click through the images above to see whether they deserve that name.

They certainly don't excite in the looks department. All three are 10.1-inch slates with an all-glass front and a plain grey back panel. They're not the prettiest of slates, nor are they particularly slim. At 10.5mm, they're a lot chubbier than the super-sleek Sony Xperia Tablet Z and they don't feel half as nice to hold.

The entry level model, the Pure starts at £250. It packs a 1,200x800-pixel resolution display and a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. Those are very uninspiring specs, so you'll need to look further up the range for some actual excitement.

The Pro looks identical, but its key specs are wildly different. For a start, it's rocking the latest Nvidia Tegra 4 processor. It's quad-core, like its predecessor, but it boasts vastly improved power for gaming. I had a go on Riptide 2 which played extremely smoothly but I'll wait for a full review before giving a verdict on this new silicon.

Its screen is better too, boasting an impressive 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution. That's outstripping the retina-display iPad and is the same you'll find on the Google Nexus 10. Everything is unsurprisingly pin-sharp and the colours seemed good too. Again, I'll wait until I make a final judgement, but it's definitely off to a good start. The Pro starts at £350.

If the name didn't give the game away, the Write boasts a stylus. For writing. Spec-wise, it's the same as the Pro, so expect the same performance. The screen has the same resolution, but the tech behind it has been tinkered with to help support the stylus. I found writing to be very comfortable and responsive, but whether that's worth paying a whopping £150 extra depends on how much you value hand-written notes.

All three models are due to hit Currys and PC World in Q3. In the meantime, pop your comments and thoughts about the slates below or over on our Facebook page.